It is a little difficult to understand why this young author should have surrounded with so much mystery her earliest attempts in the work that was to become the business of her life. She seems to have had a strange sense of shrinking from publicity as though there were perhaps a lack of dignity about the appearance of one’s name in print. How little idea she had even by this time of her own powers is shown by the fact that her first published piece was, quite to Harriet’s satisfaction, attributed to Catherine. In fact she said that she did not know that she would have let it go if it had been assigned to its own author. She had no idea, she said, of appearing _in propria persona_. However, when the potent charm that lies in literary expression had once taken a firm hold of her genius those false scruples faded away; and we cannot believe that it was not a source of intense pleasure to her when she won the prize offered by the editor of the _Western Monthly Magazine_ for the best story. This story appeared in the number for April, 1834, under the heading “The Prize Tale,” with the modest sub-title “A New England Sketch.” Her story was as different from the other articles in the magazine as black is from white. The contents of this heavy periodical consisted as a general thing of essays on the antiquities of America, the Indians and their customs, didactic tales related in trotting tetrameters, or perhaps a long-winded story of impossible adventure and sentiment in the Charles Brockton Brown manner. Harriet Beecher’s racy description of New England characteristics, the realness of the scenes, the actuality of the people, the easy simple flow of the discourse, the conversational quality of the language that the speakers used, the clever management of the incidents were all totally unknown to the readers of the magazine. It must have been like a sudden invitation to a feast of good nourishing food to those who had been living for a long time upon chaff. The story was welcomed with intense delight. It is not remarkable that the heart of this young writer, who was still homesick enough to find it impossible to sing any kind of a song in the strange land, should turn for its inspiration to the old New England home. This is the way she began: “And so I am to write a story,” she said, “but of what and where? Shall it be radiant with the sky of Italy or eloquent with the _beau idéal_ of Greece? Shall it breathe odor and languor from the Orient, or chivalry of the Occident; gaiety from France, or vigor from England? No, no; these are all too old, too romance-like, too obviously picturesque for me. No, let me turn to my own land--to my own New England; the land of bright fires and strong hearts; the land of deeds and not of words; the land of fruits and not of flowers; the land often spoken against yet always respected; ‘the latchet of whose shoes the nations of the earth are not worthy to unloose.’”